The biggest issue I see with most on-demand cleaning services is that they don't do the type of cleaning I actually need done. I don't need my surfaces dusted as much as I need laundry picked up, washed, dried, and folded, and trash, like soda cans, the occasional pizza box etc. gathered up and tossed.

Basically I want an on-demand cleaning service I can call when my place is a total mess, without doing any pre-cleanup.

Haha, in retrospect it does read that way, but its not a put down at all. My company works on lots of innovative projects, but my bread and butter is an IT hardware service solution that lowers vendor maintenance costs. Doesn't get much less sexy than that.

I'm a firm believer in going straight for the big, dull, slog of a B2B startup for the first go-round. Hopefully the end result will be some cash in the bank and a good deal of experience for when it's time to try to change the world.

Make that into an app, and I'll be your first customer. It's the convenience factor that bothers me. How do you differentiate a good housekeeper from someone who's going to steal my nutella? (I don't keep much of value in the house.)

$25/hour seems astonishingly high for an independent maid service. You should be able to find similarly high quality maids for $10-15/hr, or fixed rates that are far below $25/hr ($25-50 per cleaning).

Trust is a big factor. I can run errands with her in the house without fearing for something being stolen or I can leave my toddler with her and she's great. $25/hr isn't that much at all considering she scrubs floors and does very detailed work that the major places won't do (for even more money, I might add).

Justin's last company, Justin.tv started off as a general purpose streaming video company, then found out the video game streaming was the bigger opportunity and spun off Twitch.tv which has become a much larger and more important company.

Exec started as a general purpose errand company, perhaps they found that cleaning held an opportunity to build an important company, so they're trimming the fat to focus.

Aren't they going to have the same problem like Tutorspree, that once you have the contact info of a cleaner that you like, you simply work with him/her directly and bypass the (hefty?) exec transaction fee?

With a cleaner you have greater insurance/liability issues. Both in terms of protecting you from theft, etc. and also in terms of protecting you legally if your cleaner has an accident on your property.

I think it's unfair to compare Exec to TaskRabbit, as the former offered a much more curated experience. I believe the problem lies right there: it's really tough to intermediate supply and demand for broadly define "services", this just doesn't scale... Beyond the initial phase in which you are working really hard to amuse early customers, that is.

I for one have been amused by them in multiple occasions, Execs have helped me do things as diverse as assembling furniture and moving stuff around.

I think Exec and TaskRabbit share(d) a similar problem in that they are so broad that consumers aren't sure what to use the platform for. Renewed focus on a single service makes sense, but they face competition from Handybook and Homejoy. It's probably also difficult to differentiate in this market since the maids are all likely independent contractors.